Leo A.

Lensing

Heine's Body, Heine's Corpus. Sexuality and Jewish

Identity in Karl Kraus's Literary Polemics Against
Heinrich Heine

Karl Kraus's critical reckoning with Heinrich Heine, which culminated in the
major essay Heine und die Folgen, remains one of his most controversial
polemics. 1 Most commentators on this topic have either damned Kraus or
tried to defend him. Heine's adherents have tended to emphasize the essay's
obvious historical bias and to accuse Kraus of perpetuating an anachronistic
neoclassical aesthetic. 2 Kraus's proponents have responded by interpreting
the Heine essay as the turning point in his movement towards a satirical sys-
tem based on the radical criticism of language. Neither side, however, has
paid sufficient attention to the genesis of Kraus's critical attitudes in the
ideologically charged atmosphere of fin-de-si&cle literary politics, or to the
way in which issues of sexuality and Jewish identity, both apparent and sub-
merged, contributed to the rhetorical vehemence of this particular text. 3
It seems reasonable to suggest that, to paraphrase Jeffrey L. Sammons,
Karl Kraus belonged to those "opponents and critics" of Heine who,
"whether radical, liberal, bourgeois, conservative, or reactionary, might have
had a right to or a reason for their arguments." 4 This essay will focus on
Kraus's problematic exercise of his right, rather than on his defensible
reason. What Itta Shedletzky has determined concerning Heine's Jewish
critics in general applies particularly to the case of Karl Kraus: his Jewish

' See especially Mechtild Borries, Ein Angriff auf Heinrich Heine: Kritische Betrachlungen
zu Karl Kraus (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971). For a thorough critique of Borries, see
Helmut Arntzen, Karl Kraus und die Presse (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975), 87-
94.
2
See, for example, Bernd Kämmerling, "Die wahre Richtung des Angriffs. Über Karl
Kraus': Heine und die Folgen," Heine-Jahrbuch 11 (1972), 162-69.
3
An important exception is to be found in the chapter "Die Wunde Heine" in John
Halliday's study Karl Kraus, Franz Pfemfert and the First World War: A Comparative
Study of "Die Fackel" and "Die Aktion" between 1911 and 1928 (Passau: Andreas-Haller-
Verlag, 1986), 41-52. Although Halliday's main purpose is to document Pfemfert's
reaction to "Heine und die Folgen," he also points out that Kraus's concern with privacy
in the sexual sphere was one of the motivations for the essay. Furthermore, he gives a
useful account of the problematic connection between Adolf Bartels and Kraus, but does
not directly address the issue of Kraus's Jewish identity.
4
Jeffrey L.Sammons, "Problems of Heine Reception: Some Considerations," Monatshefte
73 (1981), 384.
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96 Leo Α. Lewing

background may have conditioned the intensity of his scrutiny of Heine, but
it did not necessarily lead to a balanced view of his predecessor's life and
work. 5 The actual degree to which Kraus's Jewish identity, however
repressed or distorted, influenced his literary judgment on Heine remains an
important open question. Kraus's radical reaction, of course, belongs within
the larger context of the Jewish reception of Heine, which has only just
begun to be investigated in depth. It is useful to know, for example, that one
of Kraus's most questionable criticisms of Heine, the condemnation of his
"French" style and its supposed deleterious influence on German journalism,
was anticipated by Ludwig Philippson in 1858 in the Allgemeine Zeitung des
Judentums,6 Analyzing Kraus's position is complicated further by his
sustained attempt to anchor his commitment to the power of poetic language
in the rejection of conventional sexual mores. Given the influences under
which he made this commitment, namely Strindberg and Weininger, it is
hardly surprising that issues of sexuality and Jewish identity led to such a
drastic formulation of Kraus's undoubtedly justified polemic against modern
journalism.
Heine und die Folgen has never been analyzed for the role it played in
Kraus's development of a satirical persona, even though certain central state-
ments in the text seem to invite such an interpretation. One of these is "Ein
Angriff auf Heine ist ein Eingriff in jedermanns Privatleben" 7 : an encroach-
ment especially, it might be added, on the lives of the broad Jewish reading
public, who considered Heine, in the words of Moritz Goldstein writing in
1906, "the first great Jewish poet in Germany." 8 Kraus, who naturally also
belonged to this Jewish readership, explicitly denies having succumbed to the
sentimental rage of reading Heine during his impressionable youth (5 4 194).
Nevertheless, there is sufficient reason to be skeptical about his disclaimer.
In one of the earliest issues of the Fackel, Kraus documented the exclusion of
Heine from the German reader used in Austrian secondary schools. He pub-
lished the letter of a recent graduate who wittily observed that not until after
his "Abitur" had he learned, "that the study of Heine was more important

5
Itta Shedletzky, "Zwischen Stolz und Abneigung: Zur Heine-Rezeption in der
deutschjüdischen Literaturkritik," in Hans Otto Horch and Horst Denkler (Eds.),
Conditio Judaica. Judentum. Antisemitismus und deutschsprachige Literatur vom 18.
Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, pt. 1, (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988), 204.
6 Hans Otto Horch, Auf der Suche nach der jüdischen Erzählliteratur. Die Literaturkritik
der "Allgemeinenen Zeitung des Judentums," 1837-1922 (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang,
1985), 110.
7
Karl Kraus, "Heine und die Folgen," in his Untergang der Welt durch schwarze Magie,
Schriften. 12 Vols., (Ed.), Christian Wagenknecht (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986-
1989), 4: 194. Works, excluding Die Fackel and the Frühe Schriften, will be cited from
this edition and abbreviated as S plus the volume number.
® Qtd. in the original German in Shedletzky, "Zwischen Stolz und Abneigung," 200.
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 97

than the study of Johann Nepomuk Vogl." (F 11, 1899, l l ) 9 When Kraus,
several issues later in his editor's column, reiterated the school system's
neglect of Heine (F 22, 1899, 30), he may have been indirectly supplying
material for his own intellectual biography. Reading Heine, the Fackel
implies, constitutes an act of opposition to the cultural authority of the state.
Thus, how Kraus himself read Heine from the outset of his literary career up
until he began to write Heine und die Folgen in the spring of 1910 deserves
closer inspection. 10
While Kraus's prt-Fackel journalism clearly owes a debt to the Viennese
predecessors he admired -- Daniel Spitzer, for example, or Ludwig Speidel,
who is accorded a prominent place in Heine und die Folgen (5 4 19If.) - it
would have been difficult for him to avoid the model of Heine's satirical
prose altogether. 11 Particularly the "Ischler Briefe," produced for various
newspapers during Kraus's vacations in Bad Ischl, and the "Wiener Briefe,"
which he wrote for the Breslauer Zeitung,12 suggest some study of the open
form and satirical wordplay that made the Reisebilder so influential. In the
pamphlet Eine Krone für Zion , which is formulated as a summer correspon-
dence from Bad Ischl, Kraus engages in a Romantic parody that is un-
thinkable without Heine's example. Citing the reluctance of wealthy
Viennese Jews — not "das Volk von Israel" but rather "das Volk von Ischl" -
either to join the Zionists or to assimilate, he writes:

Die Natur scheint ein besseres Anpassungsvermögen bewiesen zu

haben. Als ich nämlich jüngst hinausgieng, konnte ich
9
Karl Kraus's Die Fackel (1899-1936) will be cited in abbreviated form as F, followed by
the issue numbers, the year of publication, and the page numbers.
^ See Borries, Ein Angriff auf Heinrich Heine, 18. The only critic even to attempt such an
investigation, Borries reaches conclusions based on an incomplete study of Die Fackel.
She mistakenly believes that Heine is not mentioned until Die Fackel, No. 26, which
appeared in mid-December, 1899, whereas he appears rather prominently in the first issue
and is mentioned as least six more times before the twenty-sixth issue.
11
See Gilbert Carr, "Kraus's Reception of Satire in his Early Career," in Sigurd Paul
Scheichl and Edward Timms (Eds.), Karl Kraus in neuer Sicht. Londoner Kraus-
Symposium (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1986), 121f. Cf. Kurt Krolop, "Wechseldauer
der Schwierigkeiten beim Schreiben von Satire: Traditionswahl und Zeiterfahrung im
Frühwerk von Karl Kraus (1892-1899)," brücken. Germanistisches Jahrbuch DDR-CSSR
(1985-8). Although Krolop's purpose is to document the undoubtedly crucial model of
Daniel Spitzer, he cites a judgement on Heine in Max Kalbeck's introduction to a Spitzer
edition that had earned Kraus's praise in Die Fackel (F 124, 1902, 17): "Heines
'Reisebilder' und 'Salon' waren und sind noch heute geistige Mächte, denen kein
beginnender Feuilletonist sich so leicht entzieht, und sie werden mustergiltig bleiben, so
oft immer es sich darum handelt, der von den Pedanten der Schule eingeschnürten
Sprache das Mieder zu lösen." (34, n. 41). Whether Kraus agreed with this or not, there
can be little doubt that he reacted to it. Thus, he revises the corset metaphor in the
famous aphorism about Heine loosening the corsets of the German language.
These texts, published between 1895 and 1898, are collected in Karl Kraus, Frühe

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98 Leo A. Lensing

beobachten, wie sie mit der Zeit die Gewohnheiten der sie täglich
besuchenden Menschen angenommen hat. Ich hört' ein Bächlein
mauscheln, und da ich, darob erstaunt, in den Wald hineinrief,
hat mir das Echo mit einer Frage geantwortet.... 13

Although Heine is not mentioned directly in the text of Eine Krone fiir Zion,
this satirical evocation of the deformation of nature at the hands of Vienna's
Jewish elite reads like an emphatic adaptation of his style. And, in fact, the
phrase "Ich hört' ein Bächlein mauscheln" parodies the first line ("Ich hört'
ein Bächlein rauschen") of one of the poems in Wilhelm Müller's Die schöne
Müllerin, known now primarily, as it must have been in the 1890s, through
Schubert's musical setting. 14 Heine himself had, as Michael Perraudin has
recently demonstrated, used Müller as "both a model and a foil" for
establishing himself as a poet of critical folk song. 1 5 Kraus would
undoubtedly have thought of himself as doing as Heine did, not as Heine
said, especially when he completed the parody of Müller with an allusion to
the Jewish anecdote - of which there are several variants - about a Jew
answering a question with a question. 16 Kraus thereby participates less in
Heine's revision of the Romantic adulation of nature than in the latter's
deeply ambivalent attitude toward Judaism and, through the key word
"mauscheln," toward the predicament of the Jewish writer within German
culture. However much one may disagree with Kraus's critique of Herzl, his
early, subtle use of Heine shied away from the sometimes vehement
appropriation that characterized the incipient Zionist reception of the poet. 17
Just how recognizable the connection between Kraus and Heine was, how-
ever, may be seen in a remark published in a society column, "News from
Ischl," which ignores the main theme of Eine Krone für Zion and highlights
the following: "Karl Kraus, der Ischler Heine, hat das Sätzchen geprägt: 'Ich
hört' ein Bächlein mauscheln.'" 18
This Statement, one of the earliest notices of Kraus's literary activity, must
have given the young writer pause. He can hardly have been satisfied with
the role of a spa-bound Heine epigone who, like his famous predecessor,

Schriften II, (J. Braakenburg, Ed.), (Munich: Kosel, 1979).

13
Karl Kraus, Frühe Schriften II, 313.
Wilhelm Müller, Gedichte von W.M. (Ed. and with a biography by Gustav Schwab),
(Leipzig: F.Α. Brockhaus, 1837), 8f.
15
Michael Perraudin, Heinrich Heine. Poetry in Context: A Study of Buch der Lieder"
(Oxford, New York, Munich: Berg, 1989), 37-70.
16
See, for example, Max Präger and Siegfried Schmitz (Eds.), Jüdische Schwänke (Vienna:
R. Löwit Verlag, 1928), 21.
17
See Shedletzky, "Zwischen Stolz und Abneigung," 203.
18
An undated newspaper clipping containing this article, "Neuigkeiten aus Ischl," is in the
Karl Kraus Archives (Druckschriftensammlung ) of the Vienna City Library, Konvolut L
137.742. The clipping is part of a file on Heine apparently kept by Kraus himself and in
all likelihood dated from 1898.
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 99

both understood and ridiculed the Yiddish-inflected German of the Jewish

middle class. Kraus not only had to contend with benevolent comparisons; he
also had to fend off attacks mounted against him in Heine's name. In 1899,
Erwin Rosenberger, an associate of Theodor Herzl's and a contributing editor
to the Zionist organ Die Welt, published Der Pinsel, a pamphlet calculated to
criticize Kraus's anti-Zionist position and to exploit his success by cleverly
parodying the Fackel's cover design. 19 In the second of the only two issues
to appear, Rosenberger begins his polemic with a quotation from Heine's
Atta Troll that allows him to assume Heine's persona in order to denigrate
Kraus:

Ja, das Schrecklichste auf Erden

Ist der Kampf mit Ungeziefer,
Dem Gestank als Waffe dient -
Das Duell mit einer Wanze...! 2 0

Rosenberger continues by accusing Kraus, whom he identifies as a Jew, of

pandering to the anti-Semitism of his Viennese readers. By estranging
Heine's verse from its context so that it equates the young Jewish satirist with
vermin and bedbugs, however, Rosenberger indulges in rhetoric that sounds
suspiciously like anti-Semitic rhetoric. This proved to be a polemical weapon
that would backfire. Kraus turned this metaphor on both Heine and his fol-
lowers when in Heine und die Folgen he ridiculed the journalistic piety that
demands that every editorial office keep at least one bedbug from Heine's
mattress grave (S 4 207).
As these representative examples of positive and negative comparisons
indicate, coming to terms with Heine meant confronting one's own status as a
Jewish writer in German society. Given the extremes of opinion that attached
to Heine's hotly debated place within German literary history, it would be
surprising if Kraus had not been afflicted by a troublesome "anxiety of influ-
ence." 2 1
In the very first issue of the Fackel Heine figures positively in the opposi-
tional program formulated by the young satirist. Kraus objects to the
reduction of the poet's legacy to "wretched punning paired with pitiful verse
routines" (F 1, 1899, 17) that characterizes the work of Julius Bauer, a
journalist and successful librettist -of Jewish background, whom the local
press periodically hailed as the Viennese Heine. 22 Kraus suggests that the
19
On Rosenberger, see Murray G. Hall, "Ein Zionist über die 'Krone für Z i o n , " Kraus-
Hefte, 42 (April, 1987), 1-4.
20
Erwin Rosenberger, Der Handelsmann Karl Kraus, Der Pinsel, No.2 (Vienna: 1899), 1.
These verses comprise the last stanza of Caput 11 of Atta Troll.
21
See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford UP,
1973), especially the chapter "Apophrades of the Return of the Dead," 139-55.
22
Bauer, whose satirical talents had actually impressed the nineteen-year-old Kraus, is
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100 Leo A. Lensing

real Heine, upon hearing of such a comparison, will not only roll over in his
grave, but that he will also stop with his backside up as a sign of his
judgment on such imitators (F 1, 1899, 22). This witty mobilization of
Heine's corpse derives initially from Kraus's derision of such contemporary
cultural pieties as leaving one's calling card on Heine's grave or of an actual
Viennese initiative, sponsored by the City Council, to lay a wreath at the
monument in Paris. When a reader deplored the protest of the anti-Semitic
faction against this plan, Kraus replied: "Ich glaube nicht, dass sich Heine
aus Kummer über die Resolution der Wiener Antisemiten im Grabe
umgedreht hat; aber ich weiß, in welcher Lage er die Wiener Freisinnigen
empfangen wird...." (F47, 1900, 27f.)
In response to the agitation for a Heine monument in Germany that
intensified in 1906, during the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
poet's death, Kraus imagines three handfuls of dirt flying from Heine's grave
back at the spectators who piously gather at his tomb on the Montmartre (F
199, 1906, l ) . 2 3 The many Jewish readers of the Fackel would have
recognized in this comic, grisly gesture a satiric reversal of the widespread
Jewish custom of having every man present at the funeral throw three
handfuls or shovelfuls of earth into the grave. 24 The rather daring parody of
the burial rite, an intriguing if inconclusive indicator of Kraus's familiarity
with Jewish culture, links him with, rather than differentiates him fronj,
Heine, who used Jewish religious motifs in similar ways. Although Kraus
usually mobilized Heine's remains against liberal Jewish disciples of the
poet, he was also capable of wielding equally shocking corporeal metaphors
against anti-Semitic critics. After the infamous Adolf Bartels had exploited
the anniversary year of 1906 by vilifying the poet in a polemic entitled
Heinrich Heine, auch ein Denkmal, Kraus dismissed its author as "Hen-
Adolf Bartels known for the Germanic endurance with which he relieves
himself at Heine's grave." (F217, 1907, 30)
There can be little doubt that Kraus consciously separated the issues of
Heine's Jewishness and the influence of his poetry in his own critical mind,
but the preoccupation with the apparently trivial question of Heine's grave
resulted in a metaphorical conflation that suggests unconscious motives be-
hind his increasingly negative appraisal of Heine's literary legacy. In the es-

ridiculed in a similar manner several times in the Fackel. See Hans Eberhard
Goldschmidt, "Satirenanthologie und Cafehausbeleidigung. Zwei Briefe an Julius Bauer,"
Kraus Hefte 8 (October, 1978), 2-4.
23
See Dietrich Schubert, "'Jetzt wohin?' Das 'deutsche Gedächtnismal' für Heinrich
Heine," Heine-Jahrbuch 28 (1989), 43-71.
24
Patricia Steines, "Judisches Brauchtum um Sterben, Tod und Trauer," in Hansjakob
Becker, Bernhard Einig, and Peter-Otto Ullrich (Eds.), Im Angesicht des Todes: Liturgie
als Sterbe- und Trauerhilfe, Vol. 1., Pietas Liturgica 3 (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1987),
144.
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 101

say "Um Heine" of 1906, Kraus still defends the poet not only against the ef-
fusive praise of the liberal press, but also against the "Urteutonen" (F 199,
1906, 1) who deny him the right to a monument on German soil. At the same
time, however, the journalistic commotion surrounding the Heine memorial
apparently again summons up the symbolic attraction of the tomb in Paris,
and for the first time the idea of a critical "Obduktion des Lyrikers Heine" (F
199, 2) surfaces. While still at work on the manuscript of Heine und die
Folgen in September, 1910, Kraus published a gloss in the Fackel in which
Heine's corpse is finally given a voice. A report about yet another Viennese
journalist who had deposited his calling card at Heine's tombstone provokes
Kraus into having Heine speak from the grave: "Goldenstein, sagen Sie's
auch den andern, ich lass' mich verleugnen." (F 307-08, 1910, 33)
This satirical ventriloquist act is of course directed primarily against the
importunate pieties of Heine's feuilletonistic imitators, but the journalist's
obviously Jewish name and the use of "verleugnen" also strongly suggest
"das Judentum verleugnen." Thus, Kraus implicitly denies Heine's
controversial "return," his late positive re-evaluation of his Jewish heritage. 25
The insinuation that Heine renounced Judaism in order to be rid of his
journalistic followers prefigures an important event in Kraus's own life. Less
than a year later, he himself was baptized in the Karlskirche in Vienna.
Once Kraus had published Heine und die Folgen in brochure form late in
1910 and begun to take stock of initial reactions to its provocative ideas, he
returned to the image of Heine's corpse yet again. This time, however, in-
stead of allowing Heine's shade to speak, he claims to have granted him eter-
nal rest:

Sie spüren nicht, wie diese Heine-Polemik innerhalb meiner

Schlachtordnung spielt und wie sie als organische
Zusammenfassung meiner selbst organisch zusammenfaßt, was in
der Zeit vorhanden ist, möge es dieser auch gelingen, ein
versäumtes Heine-Denkmal nachzuholen. Es ist aber ungerecht,
den Totengräber des Mordes zu beschuldigen: sie fürchten für
ihren Heine, und ich habe ihm nur Ruhe verschafft; ich habe in
dieser Schrift nicht Heine erledigt, aber mehr. (F 315-16, 1911,
53)

The thrust of the body/corpse metaphors leads Kraus to understand the Heine
essay as an organic product of his satirical personality. He implies that the
consolidation of his own literary identity demands the disintegration of
Heine's. Again, this is a strategy that Kraus could have borrowed from the
predecessor against whom he uses it. Heine, after all, explained his treatment
of August Wilhelm Schlegel in the Second Book of the Romantische Schule

25
Jeffrey L. Sammons, Heinrich Heine. A Modern Biography (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1979), 305-10.
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102 Leo A. Lensing

in quite similar terms: "[...] in der Literatur, wie in den Wäldern der nord-
amerikanischen Wilden, werden die Väter von den Söhnen todtgeschlagen,
sobald sie alt und schwach geworden." 26
Although Kraus specifically denies murdering Heine and even claims not
to have finished him off, but rather what is later called "Heineismus," (F
315-16, 1911, 52) he clearly begins to identify the poet's corpse with the
poetic corpus. As powerful and as witty as this satirical reduction of Heine's
reputation and reception may have once seemed, it is necessary to see it
today as participating in what Sander Gilman has called the "medicalization
of the discourse" on the Jews that began as early as the Middle Ages. 2 7 At
the same time, Kraus's focus on the "body" of Heine allows him to bring the
even more powerful fin-de-si£cle discourse on sexuality and sexual taboo to
bear on the issue of Heine's intellectual progeny.
Near the beginning of Heine und die Folgen, Kraus uses a metaphor of se-
xual pathology to describe those consequences: the feuilleton, which embel-
lishes factual reporting with literary pretensions, is called "die Franzosen-
krankheit, die er [Heine] uns eingeschleppt hat" (i. e., syphilis, S 4 186).
Sexual metaphors in fact dominate the text much more strongly than do
references, veiled or otherwise, to Heine's Jewishness. Moreover, Kraus tries
to distract the reader from the Jewish issue by mocking the narrowminded
hatred of Heine, which is supposedly directed at the Jew and leaves the poet
untouched (5 4 196). This emphasis enabled Kraus to suppress their common
predicament of a problematic Jewish identity and to attack Heine on another,
more vulnerable front.
By this time, Kraus had already established himself as a formidable critic
of the double standard prevailing in the legal treatment of prostitutes and of
the social hypocrisy involved in male attitudes towards female sexuality. 28
Even though his conclusions about the sexual liberation of women, especially
his belief in a fundamental dichotomy between male intellect and female
sexuality, seem regressive today, they did contain progressive aspects that
underpinned the rhetorical equation of sexual issues with literary criticism in
the Heine essay. The latter is accomplished on two levels.
First, Kraus objects to what he perceives as an exaggerated male pose in
the Buch der Lieder, a judgement that is not without its parallels in recent
scholarship. 29 In Kraus's view, this privileging of the masculine voice in an

26
Heinrich Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland / Die
romantische Schule. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 8/1, (Manfred Windfuhr,
Ed.), (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1979), 165.
27
Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985),
X.
28
See Nike Wagner, Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne
(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1982), 76-131.
29
See, for example, Erich Mayser, H. Heines "Buch der Lieder" im 19. Jahrhundert
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 103

accessible, democratic idiom results in the reprehensible manhandling of

language. Thus, Heine becomes the Heinrich Heine, "der der deutschen
Sprache so sehr den Mieder gelockert hat, daß heute alle Kommis an ihren
Brüsten fingem können." (5 4 190)
Although neither the sexist implications of a "Mieder" nor the class-bound
prejudice suggested by "Kommis" are acceptable today, it is essential to
stress that this metaphorical statement turns on the objection to sexual abuse,
not to erotic stimulation. This drastic formulation reflects Kraus's abhorrence
of Heine's sexual sensibility and helps to explain why the lyrical female poe-
tic voice of Else Lasker-Schüler is pointedly contrasted in the Fackel with the
ironic male voice of Heine. In 1910, before Heine und die Folgen appeared
in print, Kraus declared that he would give more for Lasker-Schüler's poem,
"Ein alter Tibetteppich," than for all of Heine. (F 313-314, 36) And, again in
1913 in the controversial essay, "Er ist doch e Jud," Lasker-Schüler as well
as Peter Altenberg, whose literary otherness was often explained in terms of
femininity, are held up as Jewish writers preferable to Heine. (F 386, 6-7;
also in 54 331, 333)
On a second and perhaps more convincing level, Kraus takes Heine to task
for his denigration of August von Platen's homosexuality. Despite recent at-
tempts to explain Heine's exploitation of the sexual lives of his polemical
victims - Börne and August Wilhelm Schlegel, as well as Platen - as a stra-
tegy of "total polemic," 30 this proves to be a convincing point. Again, it is
not merely Heine's own behavior, which Kraus finds reprehensible enough,
but the fact that he can again point to the disastrous "consequences."
Maximilian Harden's revelations in the Eulenburg affair ~ the accusations of
homosexuality against Wilhelm II's inner circle - had already led to a
sustained polemic against Harden, Kraus's former mentor and also an
assimilated Jew. 3 1 From Kraus's perspective, the polemical burial of Heine,
condemned for both his lyrical inadequacies and his unethical wit, follows
naturally upon the "Erledigung" ( F 234-235, 1907, 1-36)) and the
"Nachruf' ( F 242-243, 1908, 4-52) of Harden, the disseminator of sexual
gossip and of a bombastic style pilloried in the Fackel as "Desperanto." (F
307-308, 1910, 42-50)
In another gloss that is not integrated into Heine und die Folgen, Kraus
reinforces his argument for the continuing influence of Heine's compromised
polemics by contrasting him with Oscar Wilde, who had been vilified by

(Stuttgart: Heinz, 1978), 86f.

30
Robert E. Holub, "Heine's Sexual Assaults: Towards a Theory of the Total Polemic,"
Monatshefte 73 (1981), 415-28.
31
See the excellent study by James D. Steakley, "Iconography of a Scandal: Political
Cartoons and the Eulenburg Affair," Studies in Visual Communication 9, 2 (Spring,
1983), 20-51.
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104 Leo A. Lensing

Max Nordau in a manner that Kraus condemned as "die Bepissung von

Dichtergräbern." (F 226, 1907, 14) Using Heine as a positive foil, Nordau,
the physician and Zionist leader, had claimed that Wilde's Salorrw exhibits
"the slippery impulses of a sexual psychopath." (F 226, 14) 32 Kraus exposed
the defamation of homosexuality implicit in Nordau's "medical" treatment of
Wilde's literary production and played off the persecuted, "perverse" genius
against Heine, who was viewed as a "raving heterosexual." 33 Nevertheless,
Kraus avoided responsibility for the inevitable connection between his own
use of pathological metaphors and their anti-Jewish implications. Not only
did he repeatedly cite reviews that denied any anti-Semitic motives behind
Heine und die Folgen, but he also apparently suppressed critiques which
expressly linked Heine's illness with his Jewishness. This is the case, for
example, in a notice from the Berlin newspaper Die Post, which may be
found in the Heine file in the Kraus Archives. 34
Although the pathological metaphor of the "Folgekrankheiten des Heineis-
mus" ( F 311-312, 1910, 6) remained part of the Fackel 's discourse on the
evils of modern journalism, Kraus would have insisted on an essential differ-
ence between his polemic against Heine and the pathographies of artists being
constructed by popular psychology. The public condemnation of Nordau the
"Literaturarzt," as he had been called as early as Eine Krone für Zion,35
belonged to Kraus's vigilant campaign against various attempts to pathologize
artistic creativity. He was also well informed about such tendencies in the
emergent pyschoanalytic movement and found out almost immediately that he
himself had been the object of a paper entitled "Die 'Fackel'-Neurose,"
which the young physician Fritz Wittels read at the meeting of Freud's
Wednesday Society on January 12, 1910. 36 It was during this time that Kraus
began to write Heine und die Folgen, and there is considerable evidence that

32
As early as 1901, Kraus had questioned Nordau's Zionist promotion of Heine, "den
deutschen Dichter." (F 87, 20f.)
33
This is the phrase of Sander L. Gilman, "Karl Kraus's Oscar Wilde: Race, Sex, and
Difference," Austrian Studies I (1990), 12-27, here 24. The place of homosexuality in
Kraus's sexualized aesthetics still awaits thorough study. The situation is complicated by
the homoerotic feelings Kraus seems to have aroused in some members of his circle.
34
This notice, dated October 9, 1911, was acquired from Klose & Seidel, a newspaper
clippings service in Berlin. The author cites the divergence of Kraus's criticism from the
usual glorification of Heine "durch fremdblütig geleitete Zeitungen und Zeitschriften"
and emphasizes two phrases from "Heine und die Folgen": "zwischen Kunst und Leben
ein gefährlicher Vermittler, Parasit an beiden" (5 4 186) and "die Franzosenkrankheit, die
er uns eingeschleppt hat." (5 4 186) See the Konvolut L 137.742 in the
Druckschriftensammlung of the Vienna City Library.
35
Karl Kraus, Frühe Schriften II, 314.
36 See Herman Nunberg and Emst Federn (Eds.), Protokolle der Wiener
Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung, Vol. 2, 1908-1910, (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1977),
346-51.
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 105

a critical reappraisal of Freud and psychoanalytic theory belongs to the

previously unrecognized motivations behind the essay.
Even before Wittels's presentation of the "Fackel Neurosis," Kraus had
gotten wind of the manuscript of the satirical novel Ezechiel der Zugereiste.
In this crude roman ά clef, Wittels, also a former contributor to the Fackel,
ridiculed Kraus by means of anti-Semitic caricature and casually revealed a
venereal infection in a character based on the young actress Irma
Karczewska, whose erotic affections they had shared. 37 Determined to
prevent publication of the novel, Kraus sent his lawyer to Freud with the
threat of an all-out campaign against the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
While Freud unsuccessfully tried to dissuade Wittels from letting the novel
go into print, Kraus gave the Psychoanalytic Circle a sample of what he
might do, with this aphoristic characterization of their scientific activities that
appeared in the Fackel of April 9, 1910: "Eine gewisse Psychoanalyse ist die
Beschäftigung geiler Rationalisten, die alles in der Welt auf sexuelle
Ursachen zurückführen mit Ausnahme ihrer Beschäftigung." (F 300, 1910,
26) 38
In the same issue, the Heine essay is mentioned for the first time as
"Gegen Heinrich Heine (Aphorismen zum Sprachproblem)" (F 300, inside
cover), which was scheduled for the program of Kraus's first lecture to be
held in Vienna on May 3. When the Psychoanalytic Society met on April 13,
the "Kraus Affair" was on the agenda. Freud enjoined his colleagues to avoid
any further discussion of Kraus's attacks with this admonition: "Es gebe für
die Wiener Psychoanalytische Vereinigung keine 'Affaire Kraus.'" 3 9 This
official repression of Kraus's critique of psychoanalysis duplicated the
conspiracy of silence against the satirist maintained by the Viennese press.
Their tactics of "Totschweigen," which Kraus often criticized in the Fackel,
make the proximity between aphorisms against Heine and aphorisms against
psychoanalysis look more planned than coincidental.
Kraus's perception that Freud had condoned the public examination of his
private life and of the psychological origins of his literary activity must have
further shaken his belief in the value of psychoanalysis. As Gilbert Carr has
shown, Kraus had responded positively in the Fackel to Freud's dream theory
and had apparently found common ground between his own practice of satiri-
cal wit and the investigations in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbe-

37
For a detailed account of these events and their contribution to the intense interaction in
Vienna between psychoanalysis and literature, see Leo A. Lensing, "Geistige Väter' &
'Das Kindweib': Sigmund Freud, Karl Kraus & Irma Karczewska in der Autobiographie
von Fritz Wittels," FORUM 36, 430/431 (October/November 1989), 62-71.
3
® The translation is from Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths. Selected
Aphorism (Ed. and Trans. Harry Zohn), (Montreal: Engendra Press, 1976), 78.
39
Protokolle, Vol. 2, 439.
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106 Leo A. Lensing

wußten.40 It may have been Kraus's interest in Freud that initially led him to
encourage Fritz Wittels's contributions to the Fackel, which included both
fiction based on so-called "Freudian mechanisms" 41 and polemical
applications of psychoanalytic theory to social and sexual issues. As early as
the summer of 1908, however, Kraus had begun to suspect Wittels of
misunderstanding the Fackel as being merely a forum for anti-corruptionism
and of exploiting psychoanalytic theory for journalistic purposes. In fact,
several aphorisms which explicate the problematic relationship between
"character" and "talent" or between an "original" and his "imitators" can be
read as referring both to the Heine problem and to Wittels's intellectual
servitude to Freud and Kraus, (cf., for example, F 266, 1908, 21; 24-25; F
277-78, 1909, 59; and F 285-86, 1909, 31)
While Kraus remained remarkably unwilling to attack Freud by name, he
did not shrink from criticizing his helpers and followers, whom he ridiculed
as "Zwangshandlungsgehilfen" (F 387-88, 1913, 21) - a pun which
combines the psychoanalytic term "Zwangshandlung" with "Handlungs-
gehilfe," the German equivalent of the "Kommis" or salesman whose
maltreatment of language is excoriated in Heine und die Folgen. (S 4 190)
There is also reason to believe that the Heine essay entails a covert reckoning
with Freud and his veneration of Heine, a project given added polemical
energy by Kraus's indignation at the public analysis of his artistic personality
in terms of an oedipal revolt against the Jewish liberal press.
In 1906, Freud had responded to a survey sponsored by the enterprising
Viennese bookseller Hugo Heller, with the information that Heine's
"Lazarus" cycle was one of his favorite works of literature. 42 Heller had
published Freud's answer along with those of Altenberg and Schnitzler, as
well as other Viennese and foreign intellectual notables in a slender volume
entitled Vom Lesen und von guten Büchern. This publication caught the
disapproving eye of Karl Kraus, and in three successive issues of the Fackel
in 1906 (F212, 14; F 2 1 3 , 15-17; F214, 6) he took issue with the project as
a whole, which he decried as an "orgy of snobbism" (F 212, 14), while
reserving particular disdain for the contributions of Schnitzler and
Hofmannsthal. It is quite likely, however, that at this juncture Kraus would
have noted with approval Freud's choice of "Lazarus," since in Heine und

4
® Gilbert J. Carr, "Karl Kraus and Sigmund Freud," in Gilbert J. Carr and Eda Sagarra
(Eds.), Irish Studies in Modern Austrian Literature (Dublin: Trinity College, 1982), 1-
30.
41
Wittels's own phrase, quoted in Lensing, "Geistige Väter," 62.
42
Sigmund Freud, Briefe 1873-1939 (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1960), 268. The letter
was a pamphlet entitled Vom Lesen und von guten Büchern. Eine Rundfrage veranstaltet
von der Redaktion der "Neuen Blätter für Literatur und Kunst" (Vienna: Hugo Heller,
1907). The commentary to the letter omits important bibliographical information and
thereby fails to mention the involvement of the cultural entrepreneur Heller.
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 107

die Folgen he himself is still willing to praise what he calls the lyrical poetry
of Heine's dying: "parts of Romanzero, Lamentations, Lazarus." (5 4 205)
Once the conflict with Freud over the "Fackel Neurosis" had broken out,
Kraus would undoubtedly have recalled Hugo Heller's role in publicizing
Freud's veneration of Heine, especially since he must have known that Heller
belonged to Freud's Wednesday Society and had attended the session during
which Wittels presented his controversial analysis of the satirist. 43 In any
case, as Kraus prepared to write Heine una die Folgen, he would certainly
have reconsidered the generous discussion of a whole range of Heine's works
in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten, including Die Bäder von
Lucca, in which Heine ridiculed Count Platen's homosexuality.
Along with Lichtenberg, Heine is in fact the writer whom Freud most
often cites in his book on jokes. Not surprisingly, in Heine und die Folgen
Kraus singles out some of the same key phrases and quotations that Freud
had examined. Freud, for example, is much more admiring of the
blasphemous wit in Heine's purported last words ("Dieu me pardonnera,
c'est son metier," as quoted by Kraus, [S4 206]) than Kraus is prepared to
be. While Freud understands metier as "Geschäft oder Beruf' 4 4 and is clearly
impressed by the bravura with which Heine compares God to a workman or
doctor hired to perform a task, Kraus belittles the blasphemous thrust of the
comparison and insists that even in matters of faith Heine cannot get beyond
business aspects. Later, Kraus would refer to "the dying Heine's suicidal
joke" and translate "metier" unambiguously as "Geschäft." (F 462-71, 1917,
23)
Of particular interest is the famous pun "famillionär" from Die Bäder von
Lucca, which concerns Freud at length. For the psychoanalyst and amateur
theorist of wit, "famillionär" is not only an excellent pun for explaining the
technique of jokes (IV, 20-24); it also suggests the psychological connections
between the poet's work and his difficult family life and even provides an
opportunity to establish a personal connection to Heine in print. (IV, 132-34)
Freud relates an anecdote about an aunt of his who had sat at the same table
with the poet in Hamburg without knowing who he was. (IV, 133) Whatever
Freud's motive for including this reminiscence, the text itself betrays a deci-
ded sympathy for Heine and shows that for his generation Heine was a living
presence, rather than just another name in literary history. For Kraus, on the
other hand, "famillionär" is but one example of the "schlechte Witze" (S 4
43
On Heller's participation in Viennese cultural life, see Michael Worbs, Nervenkunst:
Literatur und Psychoanalyse im Wien der Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt a.M.:
Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1983), 143-148.
44
Sigmund Freud, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Umbewußten, in his Studienausgabe,
Vol. 4, Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and James Strachey (Eds.), (Frankfurt
a. M.: S. Fischer, 1970), 108. Further references will be abbreviated as IV plus the page
number and cited in the text.
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108 Leo A. Lensing

203) that issue from "schlechte Gesinnung." (S 4 203) He, in fact, interprets
these puns as examples of bad Jewish jokes, which belie Heine's boast of
wielding a good Protestant house ax, even though Kraus realizes that they are
motivated by their origin in the comic imagination of the Jewish character,
Hirsch Hyacinth (S 4 204). In contrast to Freud, who sees among other
things Heine working out his aggression towards his rich uncle Salomon,
Kraus perceives irresponsible punning, which includes the denigration of
Platen's poetry as "Saunetten" (S 4 203; a pun on sow and sonnets). That this
interpretation is not only directed against Heine but also aims at revising
Freud seems even more probable in light of a passage in Der Witz und seine
Beziehung zum Unbewußten, in which Heine and Kraus are actually brought
together.
Freud alludes to Kraus twice in his book: at first by name in the discussion
of an anti-journalistic pun in the Fackel (IV, 30); 45 and then indirectly with
reference to a joke made at the expense of Kraus, whose susceptibility to
physical attacks was common knowledge in Vienna: "Wenn der X das hört,
bekommt er wieder eine Ohrfeige." (IV, 75) Freud interprets this as an
example of "omission": what is omitted is that X, having heard about a
certain matter, will write a "biting" article to which the only response will be
a physical attack. One of the further examples of this technique that follows
immediately is taken from Heine: "Er lobt sich so stark, daß die
Räucherkerzen im Preise steigen." (IV, 75) Whether Freud consciously or
unconsciously pits Heine against Kraus and refers obliquely to what had long
since become one of the cliches of Kraus criticism, the stench of his
exaggerated self-praise, is less important than the textual proximity and the
description of the satirist's reaction to the misdeeds of his opponents as a
"bissigen Artikel." (IV, 75) As careful a reader as Kraus would have
recognized in the repetition of this formulation an allusion to the earlier
characterization of Count Platen's satirical attack on Heine.
In an earlier section of his study, Freud quotes Heine's criticism of
Platen's "biting satire": "Diese Satire wäre nicht so bissig geworden, wenn
der Dichter mehr zu beißen gehabt hätte." (IV, 39) Rather than examining
the implications of this judgement or of the reprehensible homosexual jokes
in Die Bäder von Lucca, Freud simply goes on to another "good example of
play upon words." (IV, 39) As part of his own extended analysis of Die
Bäder von Lucca, Kraus cites the same passage and pointedly criticizes its

As a matter of fact, Kraus's name does not appear in the text until the 1912 edition; but,
given the fanatical precision with which the Fackel was read, it is unlikely that Freud's
reader would not have recognized the author of the pun. That Kraus is identified as the
author in 1912, at a time when Freud cannot have felt well disposed towards him,
suggests that Kraus may have demanded this correction during the negotiations
concerning the "Fackel Neurosis."
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 109

faulty wit: "wer die Armut seines Gegners verhöhnt, kann keinen besseren
Witz machen als den: der Ödipus von Platen wäre 'nicht so bissig geworden,
wenn der Verfasser mehr zu beißen gehabt hätte'." (S 4 203) Whether these
pointed parallels in Heine und die Folgen are seen as conscious corrections of
Freud or not, it seems plausible that in defending Platen Kraus also sensed
the need to defend himself against the reductionistic explanations of psycho-
analysis.
If Heine und die Folgen can indeed be understood as revising Freud's
image of Heine, then the key statement "Ein Angriff auf Heine ist ein Ein-
griff in jedermanns Privatleben" may also be interpreted as a satirical mes-
sage to the founder of psychoanalysis. The word "Eingriff can have the very
specific meaning of a surgical procedure or operation, and Kraus had already
expressed reservations about the "medical movement that applies the techni-
cal terms of surgery to psychological phenomena" ("eine medizinische Rich-
tung, welche die Fachausdrücke der Chirurgie auf Seelisches anwendet." [F
256, 1908, 19]) This medical movement was, of course, psychoanalysis. By
parodying its technical language, Kraus may have also been directing his cri-
tical operation against the founder of the movement, who in a private letter
made available for publication had named Heine one of his favorite writers.
For Kraus, this same writer had come to represent the evils of modern jour-
nalism. In any case, there is no doubt that in retrospect Kraus saw a con-
tinuity between Heine's consequences and those of Freud. In a 1922 gloss on
an article describing how Freud had become the latest intellectual fashion in
Paris, Kraus articulates this diagnosis directly: "Die Kreise, die ehedem im
Banne der Heineschen Lyrik standen, sind jetzt einem [Freud] verfallen, der
schon weiß, was soll es bedeuten." (F 588-94, 1922, 41f) With this simple
reversal of the line from Heine's "Lorelei" poem - "ich weiß nicht, was soll
es bedeuten" — which becomes a leitmotif of the Fackel's critique of psycho-
analysis, Kraus questions the value of a therapeutic approach that claims to
explain everything.
Taking Platen's side in Heine und die Folgen meant incurring the
suspicion of condoning the anti-Semitic slurs that had contributed to Heine's
decision to write Die Bäder von Lucca in the first place. That Kraus was
sensitive to this problem is clear from his reprinting reviews, such as the one
by the Swiss writer J. V. Widmann, in which Kraus is said to be completely
free of the prejudices that mark the Heine polemics "von Antisemiten und
von Deutschtümlern." (F 317-18, 1911, 43) It is also characteristic of
Kraus's strategy of controlled publicity that he is willing to cite the opinion
of a German nationalist newspaper that praises not only his attack on Heine,
but also Kraus himself as a "fanatisch in sich vergrabenen Juden." (F 331-32,
1911, 55) And, in 1913 he still feels compelled to insist that Heine und die
Folgen is more dangerous than any anti-Semitic critique of Heine. (F 372-73,

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110 Leo A. Lensing

31) This obvious anxiety about the essay being misread is understandable in
light of the aphoristic statement in the final paragraph:

Heine war ein Moses, der mit dem Stab auf den Felsen der deut-
schen Sprache schlug. Aber Geschwindigkeit ist keine Hexerei,
das Wasser flöß nicht aus dem Felsen, sondern er hatte es mit der
andern Hand herangebracht; und es war Eau de Cologne. (S 4
209)

Without trying to disentangle all of the ideological implications of this identi-

fication of Heine with Moses, it is safe to say that it reflects Kraus's need to
disassociate himself from Heine's Jewishness. Read from this perspective the
phrase "Mosaik dieses Werks" in the prognosis: "Jeder Nachkomme Heines
nimmt aus dem Mosaik dieses Werks ein Steinchen, bis keines mehr übrig
bleibt." (S 4 193) It acquires a double meaning. It seems to suggest that the
"Mosaic" or Jewish element in Heine's work produces an oeuvre that is
fragmentary and construed rather than organic and whole.
It is important to stress that Kraus denied any intention of being fair to
Heine. In an afterword that accompanied the publication of Heine und die
Folgen in the Fackel, after the essay had failed to sell briskly in brochure
form, Kraus contended that he had advanced the critique of a "Lebensform."
(F 329-30, 1911, 4) He had not undertaken the evaluation of Heine's poetical
works. What exactly this critique entailed is expressed quite openly in an
unpublished letter of June 6, 1910 to Lion Goldschmidt, the representative of
a literary society in Hamburg that had invited Kraus to give a lecture. Kraus
describes the texts he would read and includes the following description of
the Heine essay: '"Heine und die Folgen' (eine polemische Beurtheilung Hei-
nes als Ursprung des Feuilletonismus, eine Abhandlung über Sprache, über
Lyrik und Zeitungsstil, also eben jenes Thema 'Moderner Journalismus', das
Sie in der Harden-Sache vermuthen." 46
This forthright explanation, which is all the more convincing for its
avoidance of the convoluted style peculiar to the correspondence of the Ver-
lag Die Fackel, indicates that Kraus's purpose was hardly the "artistic and
moral defamation" read into the essay by Mechthild Borries, the author of the
only monograph on the polemic. 47 As this essay has attempted to
demonstrate, Kraus's self-interpretation proves inadequate to the ideological
tensions and rhetorical excesses which characterize the text.
In conclusion, I would like to propose that both Heine and Kraus be seen
as sufferers, who surmounted the fate of being German-Jewish poets. This

Unpublished letter, June 6, 1910, Karl Kraus Archives, Vienna City Library. The reading
in Hamburg did not take place, presumably because Goldschmidt and his literary society,
which had been at the forefront of the campaign to create a Heine monument in Hamburg,
learned just how polemical the essay was.
Borries, Ein Angriff auf Heinrich Heine, 7.
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Karl Kraus 's Literary Polemics Against Η. Heine 111

perspective follows the arguments of a little-known response to Heine und die

Folgen by the Yiddish writer, Shlomo Bickel (1896-1969). In his Inzich un
Arumzich, published in Bucharest in 1936, Bickel reads the essay as a power-
ful but flawed evaluation that overlooks the positive consequences of Heine's
example:

Wenn Kraus wüßte, daß auf der "jüdischen Gasse" Heine die
große elektrische Lampe im Hintergäßchen literarischen Barocks
war, daß beim Scheine dieser Lampe (obwohl einem nur
äußerlichen) ein Peretz und ein Mosche Leib Halpern in sich und
um sich herum schauen konnten, daß das scharfe satirische Wort
bei uns, wie es scheint, ohne Heine . . . unmöglich war, wenn er
das wüßte, er, die Zuchtrute Europas, vielleicht hätten sich ihm
auch andere "Folgen" gezeigt. Ach wenn er, der Erbe aller
unserer Propheten (es ist nicht Banalität, sondern Wahrheit!)
"doch e Jud" wäre. 4 «

This quotation and the context from which it is taken constitute a remarkable
document in the complicated and tragic interaction between Jews and
Germans in German literature. From the perspective of Yiddish, the
endangered language that represented what would soon seem an impossible
conjunction of German and Hebrew, Bickel attempts to mediate between
two seemingly incompatible German-Jewish writers. The reference to "doch
e Jud" evokes another polemic in which Kraus — as Bickel correctly surmises
- ironically accepted his Jewish background. (5 4 327-334) The essay "Er ist
doch e Jud" was first read at a lecture in 1913 under the title "Ich und das
Judentum," a formulation which more aptly circumscribes the fundamental
questions with which Kraus struggles in this text. Despite the intense, ambi-
valent discussion of his own position vis-ä-vis Judaism, which should give
those critics pause who attempt to explain away Kraus's achievement in terms
of "Jewish self-hatred," Kraus does abandon Heine to the categories of racist
pseudo-science, as propagated by Lanz von Liebenfels, a forerunner of
National Socialist ideology. (S 4 332f.) The polemics against Heine, the later
phases of which deserve further study, are only one aspect of the complex
interaction between Kraus's satirical achievement and his repressed Jewish
identity. A literary biography will, I believe, come to the same conclusion
about Kraus that Schlomo Bickel came to regarding Heine: that he was "ein
glücklich-unglücklicher jüdischer Dichter. " 4 9

Schlomo Bickel, Irnich un Arumzich: Notizn fitn a polemist un kritishe bamerkungen

(Bucharest: Editura "Shalom Aleichem," 1936), 177. The German translation of the
Yiddish original is by Gabriel Rosenrauch, a Czernowitz lawyer devoted to Kraus's work
and also personally acquainted with Bickel. Bickel's book contains an essay on Kraus, as
well as a notice entitled "Heine und die Folgen," from which the quotation cited here is
taken.
Bickel, Inzich un Arumzich, 177.
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